Look at this: Portia again and again!

http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.it/2013/04/norgrens-rebels-at-bar.html

DESMOND MANDERSON ON LAW AND THE VISUAL

Dear students,

starting from Friday April 12th, prof. Desmond Manderson (Australian National University) will give a series of lectures on Law and the Visual. You can find below the list of images and readings: enjoy!

ABSTRACT:  

It is a puzzle why we seem to turn a blind eye to how law is imagined, represented, and challenged in other cultural forms.  Very little attention has yet been paid, for example, to law as it is represented or constituted in images.  Law imagines itself to be resolutely hermetic, textual and linguistic.  Yet our cultures are saturated in the images and icons of art - privileged forms for the transmission and interrogation of social and institutional norms for millenia.  And visual media and mediations increasingly dominate our experience in the 21^st century.  The lawyers and jurists of the future will have to be sophisticated viewers and critics of all sorts of visual discourses. These seminars take a first step at understanding important historical and conceptual aspects of law from just that point of view.

SEMINAR OUTLINE AND READINGS (pay attention: some readings are compulsory, some others are additional) 

12^th Apr. The cultural representation of law – introduction and methodology

Images: Hammurabi’s Code (c. 1750 BCE), Jan Van Eyck, The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse, Allegory of the Civil Code (1832), Gustav Klimt, Jurisprudence (1904)

Readings:

Required: Costas Douzinas, Law and the Image

Additional: Desmond Manderson, Desert Island Disks, Nicholas Kasirer, Larger Than Life

17^th Apr. The blinding of justice

Images: Albrecht Durer, Sol Justitiae (1499); and from Sebastien Brant, Ship of Fools (1494), Lucas Cranach, The Law and the Gospel (1529), Pieter Brueghel, Justice from the Seven Virtues (1559)

Readings:

Required: Judith Resnik, Representing Justice

Additional: Martin Jay, Must Justice be Blind?, Peter Goodrich, Evidence of Things Unseen

18^th Apr. Spectacle and the Sovereign

Images: Abraham Bosse/Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), Marcus Gheerhaerts the Younger, The Ditchley Portrait (1592), Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV (1701) and Chateau de Versailles

Readings:

Required: Louis Marin, Portrait of the King

Additional: Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish

19^th Apr. Representing and representation: Colonialism and the rule of law

Images: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation (1828), Ngurrara Canvas (1997), Rafael Cauduro, Murales, Suprema Corte de Justicia (2010)

Readings:

Required: Kirsten Anker, The Truth in Painting

Additional: Stephen Ryan, The Cartographic Eye

24^th Apr. Sovereignty Revivat?

Images: T. O’Sullivan, Harvest of Death (1863) in A. Gardner, Sketchbooks of the War (1866) Frank Hurley, Dawn at Passchaendale (1917) Game Box, Six Days at Fallujah (2009)

Readings:

Required: Richard Sherwin, Visualizing the Neo-Baroque

Additional: Desmond Manderson, Three episodes from the scopic regime of sovereignty, Nicholas Mirzoeff, Invisible Empires 

PROF. MANDERSON'S CV:

Professor Desmond Manderson is an international leader in interdisciplinary scholarship in law and the humanities. He is the author of several books including From Mr Sin to Mr Big (1993); Songs Without Music: Aesthetic dimensions of law and justice (2000); Proximity, Levinas, and the Soul of Law (2006); andKangaroo Courts and the Rule of Law—The legacy of modernism (2012). His work has led to essays, books, and lectures around the world in the fields of English literature, philosophy, ethics, history, cultural studies, music, human geography, and anthropology, as well as in law and legal theory. Throughout this work Manderson has articulated a vision in which law's connection to these humanist disciplines is critical to its functioning, its justice, and its social relevance. After ten years at McGill University in Montreal, where he held the Canada Research Chair in Law and Discourse, and was founding Director of the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas, he returned to Australia to take up a Future Fellowship in the colleges of law and the humanities at ANU. 

Tomorrow and the Day after Tomorrow

Dear students,

on Wednesday and Thursday you will be asked to answer some questions about the course. The idea is to understand what you think about the course, not to test your knowledge. The questionnaire will include a text that you will have to analyze according to what you understood about the law and the humanities field of study. We will then discuss together your answers. It is not an exam but just a way to sum up!

See you tomorrow

CONFERENCE ON LAW AND ARCHITECTURE (Aix-Marseille University, 11-12 April 2013)

What: « Droit et architecture » reconsidérer les frontières disciplinaires, leurs interactions et leurs mutations

Where: Faculté de droit et de science politique Aix-en-Provence - Amphi Favoreu (entrance free)

When: 11-12 April 2013 

More information here